


Ex Illustri Vagantium Ordine

by annecoulmanross



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Academic Twitter, Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Epistolary, Illustrations, Latin Grammar, Latin Translation, M/M, Metafiction, Neddie Bird's Tattoos, No Homo Historians, Stargazing, Yes Homo Historians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:02:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annecoulmanross/pseuds/annecoulmanross
Summary: Selections from significant scholarship on Francis (“Franciscus”) Crozier and James (“Jacobus”) Clark Ross, the famous 17th century humanist astronomers.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Ex Illustri Vagantium Ordine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaserl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaserl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [illustrious order of wandering stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27362920) by [kaserl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaserl/pseuds/kaserl). 



> A translation-cum-remix of the brilliant Renaissance AU fic, “[illustrious order of wandering stars,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27362920)” for which I've also made this [fanmix](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3hJFbScDtMPMcayFzHn40l?si=Oy-ofGUMQRWDFERMnSyAtg). Also, this work wends its way back and forth before eventually fulfilling my Terror Bingo square “Polaris.”
> 
> **I recommend reading this fic more like an academic article than a story – jump around, skip anything you don't find interesting, treat it as a scavenger hunt, if you like! Probably do try to read it on a computer, though – the illustrations will almost certainly throw the formatting off on mobile.**

## From “Ex Illustri Vagantium Ordine: Epistolary Relationships between the Astronomers of the Late English Renaissance” (Helmsman 2008)

##### Prefatory Note

About five years ago, I was employed in preparing a catalogue of historical letters maintained by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). One portion of these letters consisted of a collection of correspondence dating back to the height of the English Renaissance, detailing events concurrent with the famous discoveries of Galileo Galilei in Italy. Amongst these papers were letters penned by figures well known by name to every student of astronomy, but perhaps the most interesting object of them all was a small, hand-bound volume, apparently collecting the letters composed by two notable astronomers between about 1600 and 1639.

Though Francis (“Franciscus”) R.M. Crozier (1576–1657) and James (“Jacobus”) C. Ross (“Roscius”) (1580–1662) made enormous contributions to astronomical observation practices in England, little is known about their lives. The letters between them – written during the infrequent intervals when, whether travelling individually or separated by scholarly necessity, they did not live together in their shared observatory – show deep bonds of friendship and love between the two men. I myself found the accounts of Ross and Crozier’s astronomical discoveries so interesting, both in matter and in style, that I translated them as a recreation from school-work.

In this article, I present a small selection of these letters, highlighting those written during James Ross’s scientifically productive travels between the watershed years of 1609 and 1610 and discussing both scholars’ engagement with the work of Galileo Galilei. I venture to think that others also will be interested in following these two astronomers in their discussions of the famous discoveries in their field. These letters offer us a rare chance to read the language with which Crozier and Ross announced these discoveries to each other, and tender a unique insight into the affectionate relationship they shared.

## Rerum Ipsarum Cambridge Renaissance Library

Since 2001, the Rerum Ipsarum Cambridge Renaissance Library has been the only series to make the major literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific works of the English Renaissance written in Latin available to a broad readership. Each volume provides a reliable Latin text together with an accurate, readable English translation on facing pages, accompanied by an editor’s introduction, notes on the text, brief bibliography, and index. Presenting current scholarship in an attractive and convenient format, The Rerum Ipsarum Cambridge Renaissance Library aims to facilitate access to this essential literature for both students and scholars in a wide variety of disciplines as well as to general readers.

##### Frequently Asked Questions

**Why is the name “Rerum Ipsarum” attached to the Cambridge Renaissance Library?**

The Latin phrase Rerum Ipsarum, meaning “of the things themselves,” plays a central (if also mysterious) role in the foundation of the Cambridge Renaissance Library. Legend has it that, during the 16th and 17th centuries, several young students at Cambridge found an inscription carved into the medieval stone foundations of the Barrow Library Building. This inscription – though faint – is still visible:

[Text has been highlighted digitally to increase legibility.]

Written in a curving hand much like the Roman graffiti found in places like Pompeii (and much unlike the straight-lined medieval mason’s marks on the same stone block) the text has long been held as lucky for those students who trace it over with a finger before exam season.

What, however, is the origin of this phrase? One possibility is that these words come from the Latin writings of St. Augustine; the phrase “rerum ipsarum” appears twice in St. Augustine’s Confessions. In the second appearance, Augustine offers a striking and prescient interrogation of linguistic semiotics:

##### “Who would be willing to talk about tragedies if every time we said the word for sadness or fear we had to feel grief or be afraid? And even so, we would not talk about them unless we found in our memory not only the sounds of the words’ names, based on the impressions imprinted by our physical senses, but also the concepts of the things themselves.”

(Augustine, _Confessions,_ 10.14.22, trans. Carolyn J.–B. Hammond, 2014.)

It is also possible that the inscription has its origins even further back than Augustine, with the Roman writer Marcus Tullius Cicero – albeit, a reconstruction of Cicero rather than the man himself. In his play _Julius Caesar,_ Shakespeare assigns to the character of Cicero a cryptic maxim: “Men may construe things after their fashion, / Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.” (1.3.455-6) Should this line be translated from English in Latin, we would expect the last phrase to appear as “rerum ipsarum.”

## Crozier, Franciscus, and Jacobus Roscius. 2019. Letters between Friends. Edited and translated by K. Helmsman. Rerum Ipsarum Renaissance Library. Vol. 88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

**Francis Crozier** (1576–1657) and **James Ross** (1580–1662) were two of the greatest scholars of the English Renaissance. By applying the theories of Galileo to a broad sample of detailed celestial observations, Crozier and Ross rapidly advanced the nascent field of astronomical science. Their letters, epistles of varying lengths and complexities, spanning more than fifty years of friendship, offer insight into their daily lives and work, and also reflect both men’s deep study of ancient literature and engagement with the classical past. The present volume includes all surviving letters between Ross and Crozier, with the exception of the lengthy epistolary treatise **Umbrae Sublustres** or “Dim Shadows,” published in 2004 as RIRL 14. The remaining letters have all been fully translated into English for the first time, here.

**K. Helmsman** (MA, Science and Technology Studies, from University College London; PhD, Classics and Ancient History, from University of Exeter) is an associate professor of Classics at Cambridge University and an interdisciplinary scholar studying the social history of Renaissance humanist scholars, with a particular focus on the use of classical intertextualities in epistolary communication.

[Addendum, 18 May 2019: “Helmsman’s body of work includes scholarship on historical gender and sexuality, and they have written extensively on the topic of how queer relationships in the Renaissance were filtered through the lens of antiquity.”]

Footnotes: 

1 – _Franciscus R.M. Crozier Jacobo C. Roscio suo sal._ – The standard opening formula for a letter in Latin, in which both the writer and the recipient are named in the third person, the writer in the nominative case, and the recipient in the dative.

2 – _observationes meae_ – In MSS, _meae_ ("my [observations]") is preceded by nostrae ("our [observations]"), crossed out.

3 – _nituerunt_ –“[My observations] have been shining,” a pun – it is not the observations that are literally “shining,” but the astronomical phenomena observed.

4 – _Avis_ – “Bird,” i.e. Edward Joseph Bird (1578-1681), a disciple (and later colleague) of Ross and Crozier, who came to lead the astronomical data collection on their behalf in later years.

5 – _diuturnarum observationum_ – A Ciceronianism, “long-lasting observations,” especially used of stars and constellations, cf. _diuturna observatione siderum_ (Cic. _Div_. 1.2)

6 – _praeter eventum nihil curant_ – Another Ciceronianism, “[those who] care for nothing except the results,” cf. _ita praeter animum nihil curant_ (Cic. _Fin_. 4.36)

7 – τὰ σήματα – Greek; used of “signs” but also of “constellations,” (as well as “tombs.”)

8 – _deliciae meae_ – Most often a romantic term of address, though not always; cf. _amores ac deliciae tuae, Roscius_ (said of Cicero’s “friend,” the actor Quintus Roscius Gallus, Cic. _Div_. 1.79)

9 – _scito me_ – Note the alternative (vulgar) meaning of scito (“to know,” in a Biblical sense, thus “know me,”) if one chooses to end one’s reading here, a reading encouraged by the fact that the MSS continues on only in differently-colored ink; albeit in the same hand (Crozier’s.)

Footnotes: 

1 – _longiore intervallo_ – A Ciceronianism, though a common one, “for a longer interval,” cf. _quae quasi longo intervallo interiecto videmus_ (Cic. _Off_. 1.30)

2 – _oblivioni...tradatur_ – Literally, “[only our friendship indissoluble can never] be consigned to oblivion,” cf. _oblivioni tradatur_ (Serv. _Ecl_. 1.63.2) In contrast to the Ciceronian style of both Ross and Crozier’s typical Latin, Ross here appears to have lifted a phrase from a _Commentary on Vergil’s Eclogues_ ( _In Vergilii Bucolicon Librum_ ) by the late antique grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus. The presence of this particular idiom in this letter may be explained by Pierre Daniel’s (1530-1603) publication of a new edition of Servius’s commentary alongside the collected works of Vergil, in 1600 – only a decade or so before this letter appears to have been written. We might imagine that Ross owned such a volume, and perhaps even brought it with him to read while travelling. Though none of Ross’s other writings betray an interest in the Latin poet Vergil, Crozier’s boyhood literary efforts happen to include a bucolic cento composed from lines of the Eclogues, and include a jocular allusion to the etymology of Crozier’s surname.

Footnotes:

1 – κατὰ καιρόν – Once again, Crozier slips a phrase of ancient Greek into his letters. In this instance, it is especially clear that Crozier’s use of Greek is purposeful, since he retains the idiomatic prepositional phrase κατὰ καιρόν (“exactly; at the proper time,” used here, as elsewhere in Crozier’s letters, to mean “when God wills; eventually,”) but immediately thereafter Crozier uses the Latinization _phaenomenon_ , rather than the original Greek φαινόμενον.

2 – _quam actuosissimae_ – This phrase, meaning “as busy as ever,” is perhaps a reference to the _Deus Actuosissimus_ (the “ever active God,” or “God most busy”) of Martin Luther’s _De Servo Arbitrio_ (1525). It has been speculated (cf. Hugh 2018) that Crozier was perhaps opposed to the Church of England and his sympathies lay more with a Lutheran spirituality – if, indeed, any spirituality at all (Cowie 2016, responding to Fitzsimmons 2007, suggests that Crozier later became a deist, following the metaphysical philosophy of Edward Herbert (1583-1648) – and any distaste for Catholic orthodoxy certainly must have escalated his concern for Ross, far away in Catholic Italy, especially in light of the aggressive reactions of the Catholic church toward natural philosophers at this time, even before the Inquisition set its sights upon Galileo Galilei (cf. the grisly fate of the Copernican scholar Giordano Bruno, 1548 –1600.)

3 – _Avis studium novum nactus est. Nuncios noviter publicatos Mundi Novi novissime._ – Crozier, rarely witty with his word-choice, here plays, not only with the alliteration of the initial ‘n’ sound, but also with the polyptoton of _novum_ (“new [interest]”), _noviter_ (“newly”), _novissime_ (“recently”) and _Novi_ (“New [World]”), perhaps making a gentle joke at Bird’s expense.

4 – _de picturis quibus aliquae gentes cutem compunguntur_ – Evidently scraping at the edges of the Latin language’s ability to render the idea of tattooing, Crozier reaches for an obscure Ciceronian usage of _compungo_ , “to brand,” or “to prick,” though Crozier’s use of _picturae_ to describe the resulting marks shows more admiration for the artistic efforts of the indigenous peoples of the New World than Cicero’s equivalent _notae Thraeciae_. (Cic. _Off_. 2.25) The _cutem_ (“skin”), here, is best taken as an accusative of respect, since compunguntur is something of a Greek middle-voice verb.

5 – _mi dilecte_ – Whereas in his previous letters, Crozier used the more nebulous _deliciae meae_ , this endearment, _mi dilecte_ , meaning “my dear,” occasionally refers in the classical literature to one’s favorite or the ὁ ἐρώμενος (cf. Suet. _Aug_. 98.) and is somewhat inarguably affectionate, even subtly sexual.

Footnotes: 

1 – _Tu, quaeso, ad me scribe_ – “Oh please do write to me,” a fairly clear Ciceronianism – cf. _tu, quaeso, crebro ad me scribe_ (Cic. _Att_. 7.10)

Footnotes: 

1 – _Quam_ ὀξύπεινος _in curiositate sum_ – Perhaps Crozier’s most evident Ciceronianism, demonstrating conclusively that both men had thoroughly read the Letters to Atticus and possibly had done so together, that such a vivid phrase might have become something of an inside joke between the two. “How ravenous in curiosity I am,” Crozier remarks, using a very rare word ( _curiositas_ ) elsewhere only in Cicero’s _sum in curiositate_ ὀξύπεινος (Cic. _Att_. 2.12.2) until the time of Macrobius and the Christian authors.

2 – _hunc nuncium_ – The spelling of _nuncium_ ("message") can be explained by the fact that Crozier clearly means the _Sidereus Nuncius_ itself.

3 – _amabo te si te servabis_ – Literally, “I will love you if you will keep yourself safe.”

4 – _noli oblivisci in tuo gaudio te promisisse mihi ut esset minus quam annum_ – In MSS, the text from _noli....annum_ , (“do not forget in your excitement that you promised me it would be less than a year”) was crossed out; it has been restored here, with some speculation where necessary. 

5 – _Vale, meum desiderium, vale._ – This Ciceronianism falls somewhere between familial and conjugal in tone; used in the plural, by Cicero-in-exile, of his wife Terentia and daughter Tullia, cf. _Valete, mea desideria, valete_ (Cic. _Fam_. 14.2.4)

Footnotes: 

1 – _in gaudio curiositatis captus sum_ – The use of the rare _curiositas_ is evidently in response to Crozier’s previous letter.

2 – _coepturum cursum_ – Particularly poetic language, meaning “to begin a celestial course,” first recognized as an intertextuality by a friend and colleague, R.O. Mars, cf. _quod ad dexteram / c[o]epit cursum_ (Cic. _Div_. 1.45) in which Cicero quotes the poet Lucius Accius’s description of the sun travelling backward, toward the “right,” i.e. the Orient. (For more discussion, see Mars 2003 – “The Sun Rose From the West Today: Apocalyptic Reception of Lucius Accius and the Early Latin Poets in the 17th Century,” – in which the argument is made that “Lucius Accius’s star shines brightest, perhaps, in the allusive games of the astronomers of the English Renaissance,” pg. 106.)

3 – οἴκαδε – Rarely does Ross use Greek, making the force of this word, “homeward,” particularly nostalgic, pointing clearly toward Crozier, the more regular Greek-user in this relationship, who awaits Ross’s return at home. Its unusual placement at the end of the line reinforces this emotional valence and creates an almost-Homeric sense of desire for homecoming.

4 – _Nescio an non litteras a te recipiam_ – Elsewhere translated as “I do not know if I will receive any letters from you” but, in fact, the more doubtful, “I suppose that I will not receive any letters from you,” is surely intended.

5 – _Si vales cui meus amor, ego valeo_. – Ross ends this last surviving letter from this year with this tender postscript. Though most scholars have read the third word of Ross’s rather messy writing as the dative _cui_ , (rending the sentiment “If you are well, you who have my love, I am well,”) it may actually be the nominative _qui_ , for which we might offer the alternative translation, “If you are well, you who are my love, I am well.” Either way, the sentiment is pointed; Ross’s affections – his love – are for Crozier alone.

## Written in the Stars: Love Letters from the Astronomers of the English Renaissance (Helmsman & Mars 2018)

To J.C.R. & F.R.M.C. –

 _index laetitiae adsit in astra vostrae_  
“May the sign of the joy that you both held together be present among the stars.”

(cf. Ov. _Fasti_ 4.328)

– – – –

##### Introduction

Any time you look up into the night sky – in the northern hemisphere, at least – and seek out Polaris, the pole star (which has remained largely stationary respective to earth since late antiquity) you are joining a great community of star-seekers, many of whose names have been lost to time – but not all.

In the fifth century of the common era, the author Stobaeus referred to Polaris as ἀεί φανής (aei phanēs) "always visible." More than a millennium later, these same words of ancient Greek made an appearance in the letters of the humanist scholars and early astronomers Francis Crozier and James Clark Ross, each writing to reassure the other that, each and every night, they were both looking toward the same ever-faithful north star.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Source Notes:** The “Prefatory Note” is based very heavily upon a preface written by Edward Stafford Carlos for his 1880 [translation](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46036/46036-h/46036-h.htm) of Galileo Galilei’s famous astronomical treatise _Sidereus Nuncius_ (1610), from which I've also stolen diagrams of Jupiter's moons to serve as section separators. The “Rerum Ipsarum Cambridge Renaissance Library” is a parody of Harvard’s [I Tatti Renaissance Library](https://itatti.harvard.edu/publications/book-series/i-tatti-renaissance-library), and the description of _Written in the Stars_ (2018) has been plundered almost whole-cloth from the summary of Amy Richlin's _Marcus Aurelius in Love: The Letters of Marcus and Fronto_ (2007).


End file.
